


Vicious Edges

by excelgesis



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24732004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excelgesis/pseuds/excelgesis
Summary: Mark’s not sure if he’s meant to tame the wild,vicious edges of Lee Donghyuck.He wonders if maybe he’s too hesitant,wonders if maybe someone could do it better.But Mark’s finger slips from the triggerof his safe lifeand catches, bloody,on a patch of pretty thorns.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 13
Kudos: 106





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> I ran a poll on twitter asking if anyone wanted a markhyuck childhood friends to lovers poetry compilation,,,  
> it was a resounding yes, for some reason, so if you like poetry and you like markhyuck,,,,  
> this is the best i can do?

Mark Lee ran away from home

when he was eight.

Or maybe it didn’t really count,

because he only made it to the convenience store on the corner,

and all he had was 1,000 won in his pocket

and the fading memory of a headache

shoved between his eyes.

He had to do it, he told himself,

because he’d failed his spelling test at school

and maybe his parents wouldn’t love him anymore

if they knew.

There was a girl in his class,

a girl whose words shivered at the end of her tongue

like freezing drops of rain,

and the other students would snag onto her uniform sleeves—

brambles: tearing, digging, sneering—

because her parents got divorced.

And Mark wondered if maybe

it was because she failed a spelling test, too,

and her parents stopped loving her,

and the thought kept him awake until midnight.

His mom found him eventually,

curled in a plastic chair outside a GS25

with his cheek plastered to a dirty table.

And she didn’t stop loving him,

not right away,

but her smile took on the edge

of the broken soju bottles he saw on the ground.

She told him then that life

was like a rose garden—

beautiful only if you handle it

the right way—

and he never failed a spelling test again.


	2. two

Mark has never been to Jeju Island, or any island, ever,

because he’s only ten. But he imagines

Jeju is full of people like Lee Donghyuck, and that

must be really exhausting.

Donghyuck transfers into their class with a backpack

that’s bigger than he is

and an accent that flips from his tongue

like hummingbird wings.

Mark doesn’t like him because he’s loud, and

always gets the highest grades and always

has the most friends. It’s really unfair,

in the grand scheme of things,

because Mark has known these people for years,

but he’s an instant shadow in the face

of Donghyuck’s brilliance.


	3. three

Middle school hits hard, a bullet fired from a revolver

that he never felt pressed against his temple,

and he learns quickly that life is more

Russian roulette than rose garden.

He’s got chain-link metal stretched

across his teeth and sometimes it hurts too much

to smile, so he doesn’t. His glasses slip down his nose

and it’s too much work to push them

back up.

His mother’s soju-glass smile slices through

every report card that dares dip below the letter A

and he can’t walk past a GS25

without flinching.

He wonders how he’s supposed

to handle this the right way.

But Donghyuck has always been

more rose garden than roulette,

and his syllables have rounded out into words

that fit comfortably in the neon streets of Seoul.

He handles everything the right way, beautifully,

and Mark wonders what it must feel like, knowing

you can speak without blood

filling up your mouth.

He asks one day, because he and Donghyuck are waiting

for the same bus. Donghyuck doesn’t say anything at all,

and Mark is a little afraid that maybe he’s

forced the garden to bloom out of control.

But then Donghyuck laughs the way people do on TV,

with his head thrown back and all of his teeth showing,

and it echoes loud in the 4 PM streets,

and it’s so absurd Mark can’t help but laugh, too,

just a little bit.


	4. four

Revolver in hand,

one finger on the trigger,

Mark makes it through middle school with

chapped lips and Donghyuck clinging

to his jacket sleeves.

He doesn’t think they work

as friends—at least, not in the way that

most friends do.

They fight too much, care too much,

seethe and hate and rewrite their story too much,

ignore too much and feel too much, and

Mark can’t count the times he’s torn the photo of them

off his bedroom wall.

He always tapes it back up, but it’s never

quite the same, always creased and torn

in ways it never was before.

_Maybe we’re not meant to be friends,_

he tells Donghyuck, and he means it because he

never says things he doesn’t mean.

But Donghyuck smiles at him, too wide,

too bright, because even after years in

Seoul skyscraper shade, he’s got Jeju infused

into his rosewater blood like oxygen:

_I’d like to see you try to stay away from me._


	5. five

Sixteen:

  1. Chain-link finally broken, teeth smooth as polished stones, Mark thinks he’ll find his voice again. He trades his glasses for contacts
  2. Eyes teary in front of the bathroom mirror, he doesn’t recognize himself. He hates contacts, still wears his glasses at home, but a girl in class told him he was handsome like this and stole the sleep from his brain for three nights
  3. His mother’s smile has taken on the crimson tint of his own blood, but he’s sure it’s softer now that he says he’ll play sports, join the basketball team, run for student council
  4. Life is beautiful if you handle it the right way
  5. Donghyuck is quiet these days.



Seventeen:

  1. Mark isn’t loud enough for student council or tall enough for the basketball team
  2. One grade topples from an A to a B and something dark crawls into his mother’s eyes
  3. He tells himself he’s enough
  4. He wakes up when the sky is still blinking back daylight so he can style his hair, put his contacts in, study for an extra fifteen minutes and handle it all the right way
  5. He hasn’t spoken to Donghyuck in six months
  6. He hasn’t spoken to himself in a year.



Eighteen:

  1. He kisses a girl at the school gate because she has long, flowing hair and he thinks she’s pretty
  2. She texts him later but he never replies because he’s not who she thinks he is
  3. Who is he?
  4. He falls asleep with his glasses at the end of his nose and his thumb hovering over Donghyuck’s number
  5. He graduates, tells himself he’s enough, feels empty, moves on.




	6. six

College teaches him that,

no matter what his mother says,

Russian roulette is safer than a rose garden.

It gives him a chance, a semblance of control,

and an end he can eventually bet on.

Rose gardens are just a futile attempt at

taming the vicious edges of something

meant to grow wild.

And in that way, Lee Donghyuck was always

a rose garden.

At twenty, Mark isn’t sure how

he’s supposed to feel. But he does know

that his hair is getting too long and there’s

rain splattered across his glasses and he’s

seeing Donghyuck for the first time

since high school. Sitting there in the

college library, hair dyed some shade

of caramel brown, and maybe

rose petals in Mark’s throat

have stolen his ability to breathe.


	7. seven

Months later,

ice skirting the edges of

leaves and painting the

sidewalks a shade of

hazardous.

Donghyuck sees him first.

Hot chocolate in his gloved hands,

an oversized sweater

hanging on his honey shoulders,

still so much sunlight in this boy

Mark probably doesn’t

know anymore.

_Mark Lee?_ An unconvincing

incredulity, and Mark knows

Donghyuck has seen him before this,

but he doesn’t know how he knows.

But Mark smiles halfway and

pushes his glasses up and

he wonders if Donghyuck

misses him in the way that

makes his lungs feel like

they’re full of glue.

_You look like someone I used to know._

Donghyuck’s eyes are silk-soft

when he says it.

_In middle school._

Mark doesn’t know why he asks,

when he already knows

what the answer will be.

_Who?_

_You._


	8. eight

Taming the vicious edges of Lee Donghyuck

isn’t something Mark is sure he can do.

Because it’s been so long,

because he’s not sixteen,

because Donghyuck has grown

into the type of self-assured, destructive

wildfire that Mark could only dream

of being.

He’s smoke at the edge of

every rose petal and thorns

snagging on tongues of

firecracker flames, and maybe

Mark is stupid

for thinking he was

ever

anything

else.

But twenty-one is easy.

Twenty-one is slipping back,

one finger on the trigger,

to the Mark Lee he used to be.

Twenty-one is Donghyuck on

his dorm room floor, one hand

in a bag of chips as he asks Mark

what they should order for dinner.

Twenty-one is Donghyuck laughing

the way people do on TV,

with his head thrown back

and all of his teeth showing.

Twenty-one is

Russian roulette.


	9. nine

Russian roulette is safer

than a rose garden.

Mark knows this, carries it with him in the hollow

spaces between his ribs.

And yet he’s stupid,

stupid,

stupid,

stupid

for reaching out and catching his

fingertips on the edges of pretty thorns.

Because twenty-two is a rose garden.

It’s their dingy studio apartment with

the creaky hardwood floors and

the dirty dishes that Donghyuck

leaves on the kitchen counter.

It’s a bed pushed into one corner

with Mark sleeping on the couch, and

the way he sees Donghyuck slip

through the front door at 2 AM to

return with a necklace of hickeys and

an untucked shirt.

It’s the fire at the edge of every petal,

and the way it works itself

into Mark’s lungs, his brain,

his limbs, when Donghyuck ignores

him for the wandering lips and hands

on the other end of the telephone.

It’s the first time he thinks

Donghyuck is a devastating sort of

beautiful—with his eyes cast

downward

and someone else’s late-night

promises inked into his

pretty skin.


	10. ten

Mark graduates

with the scent of roses

in the air.

Donghyuck’s eyes are on him,

heavy,

when they say goodbye.

Mark packs every box,

taping them all twice

for good measure,

and he thinks he can see

Donghyuck stare just a little bit longer

than he needs to.

And Mark thinks he knows,

finally,

what a rose garden looks like

after it’s been burned to the ground.


	11. eleven

Mark Lee,

one finger on the trigger,

feels the revolver pressed against his temple.

It’s the ice-water shock of his alarm at exactly 6:15 and

the wrinkled suit he shrugs on for the third day

in a row.

It’s the cold metal of subway tracks and

the unforgiving fluorescent light of his office.

It’s another day, another paycheck, another hollow

 _click_ when the bullet decides

to spare him again.

He supposes he should be grateful.

Russian roulette is, after all,

safer than a rose garden.

But he’ll never be spared,

not completely,

because his phone still lights up

at 3 AM when Donghyuck

forgets about the time difference.

_Europe is nice,_

he says, like he’s telling Mark

about the weather.

_You should visit sometime._

And Mark never will because he’s

too busy with his hand glued to

the safe trigger of his safe life, and

he knows he’ll never be enough to handle the

foreign,

wild,

devastating

rose garden

that is Lee Donghyuck.


	12. twelve

A knock on Mark’s apartment door—

two knocks, then three—

that match the stuttering of his heart

somewhere in his throat.

_I’ll be there on Friday,_

Donghyuck had said, and Mark

had said _okay_ because

he’s an idiot.

But now his palms

slip and slide against the doorknob

and it takes him a few tries

to turn it the right way.

Donghyuck laughs at that,

with his head thrown back the way

people do on TV,

and Mark wonders if maybe

they’re twenty-one again.

_Long time no see_

sounds different on Donghyuck’s tongue,

the syllables comfortable and soft in a way

they never were with anyone else.

He throws his suitcases onto the floor.

Mark asks when he’s going

back to Europe.

Donghyuck doesn’t say

anything at all.

They eat kimchi stew in front of the TV

because Donghyuck orders it,

and Mark has so many questions perched

on the tip of his tongue,

all standing in a neat and tidy row

like birds on a telephone line.

But they’re shot down,

point-blank,

when Donghyuck looks him in the eye

and asks _didn’t you miss me?_

And Mark says _of course_

because he’s always missed Donghyuck

in that way that makes his lungs

feel like they’re full of glue.

_I’ve missed you_

_ever since I met you._

Mark’s finger slips from the trigger

of his safe life

and catches, bloody,

on a patch of pretty thorns.


	13. thirteen

Mark’s not sure if he’s meant to tame the wild, vicious edges of Lee Donghyuck.

He wonders if maybe he’s too hesitant, wonders if maybe someone could do it better.

But Donghyuck is breathy sighs and foreign syllables pressed against his mouth—

Donghyuck is petal soft and whispers of _more_ and _please_

and fingertips digging into sweat-slick skin.

Donghyuck is the gentle sting of teeth at Mark’s neck,

delicate curves under Mark’s fingers,

whimpers of Mark’s name,

endless.

Mark finds a home there, where Donghyuck’s neck meets his shoulder,

where his hands slope into porcelain wrists and his fingers tighten in Mark’s hair.

Where his back arches and his toes curl and he _begs_ and his tears hit the pillowcase, dark—

and he thinks he was never meant to tame Donghyuck’s vicious, wild edges—

he was meant

to find himself

in them.


	14. fourteen

Mark Lee ran away from home

when he was eight.

He still remembers it,

twenty years later,

as he sits on the couch

watching a bad movie

with Donghyuck’s head

resting in his lap.

And he wonders if life is a rose

garden that can only be beautiful

when handled the right way.

But then Donghyuck laughs

the way people do on TV,

with his head thrown back

and all of his teeth showing,

and tears pool in his eyes

even though the movie isn’t

really all that funny,

and Mark

feels stupid

for

wondering.


End file.
